Dawn Is Me

So, this month over at Women on the Verge, our topic is Women Changing The World — and we do, don’t we?

Further elucidation comes from Our Glorious Leader, Ana Lewis:

I am in awe of some of the things that people in our wotv community do on a daily basis. Women are changing the world – right here, today, and this is an opportunity for them to tell us all those things that they do every day to spread the message and achieve the mission that they are aiming to do – sometimes by themselves. They are no longer alone. We will help showcase how Women Change the World.

My very first thought was this factoid: in economic development circles it is well known that, if you give business development assistance to a man, he will improve his lot and that of his family but, if you give business development assistance to a women, she will improve her lot and take her entire community with her.

But that’s not what Ana was talking about. Not really.

If I want to turn the spotlight on myself, I could say, glibly, that any woman who is a mother is changing the world … one offspring at a time. That would be true, too, but that would be cowardly.

Sometimes, I hide behind my children. I love them passionately and will fight for the to my dying breath. But right now, where I’m at is all about me and what I like to think of as My Interrupted Journey.

Is it possible for me to think of myself as changing the world when I’m in a place that is All About Me?

So, what are you doing this year, Dawn, and what does it have to do with anything?

I am discovering myself and giving myself permission to be who I am and where I am most alive.

Where do I come alive? When I’m learning.

I find that everything about me is about learning.

My relationships consist of opportunities for me to learn from people. I learn from them about themselves and what it is like to view the world from inside their skin. I learn from them about absolutely anything about which they know more than I do. I learn how to connect with them. And, because people are continually evolving (or at least, the people I best relate to), there is always more for me to learn about them — so those relationships don’t have to end when I’ve learned all there is to know about and from a person. That just doesn’t happen.

I learn about things and then I write about them in my newsletters and my white papers and my research and my books.

I learn about myself and I write about that here.

I learn about my children and that helps me to parent them.

And, of course, there is the minor matter of returning to school. No need to state the obvious, right?

The fact is that everything I do is a learning opportunity, because that is the way I see it. It’s possible that nobody else on the planet sees it that way, but that’s not important.

So, what did I need in order to give myself permission to be this learner? I need to be physically, emotionally and psychologically safe.

I am an abuse survivor. Fear has been a very big part of my life so far. It gets in my way in more ways than I have time to describe here. The fact that I have continued to function has been itself an act of bravery.

So, in order for me to feel free to keep learning, I have to believe that (a) I can protect myself, (b) there will be people in my life who will love me and want to protect me, and (c) there will be times when I will get hurt or otherwise threatened but it won’t be anything I can’t handle.

My job, as I see it, will be to convince myself of that by figuring out how I got to where I am right now and, more importantly, finding ways to prove to myself that it’s true.

And where does changing the world fit into all of this?

That’s easy. What I learn, I share.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Women Change The World is our theme for 2012 and for the month of January. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on the WOTV monthly radio show (where I am a panelist) on January 18th from 7pm to 8pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.

I’m probably not in the best place to be writing about healing between the genders.

That was my first thought when I started out to ponder this month’s Women on the Verge theme.

I’m just about six months out from finalizing my divorce. At this point, I’m sad and lonely and scared. I’m not sure that I have anything to say about healing; I’m not sure I remember what it feels like. In my current circumstances, it would probably be fairly easy to refuse to say anything positive about him, in particular, or about men, in general.

But if I stop to really think about it, I find myself wondering … what’s to heal?

As odd as it sounds, I was with a guy who wanted to stay married to me without being required to have an actual relationship with me. But I’m not angry with him about that, I guess because I haven’t taken it on. Once I understood that was the lay of the land, I realized almost immediately that was his issue and not my fault.

Even now, my sorrow and fear have nothing to do with him. Instead, I’m realizing how long I’ve been alone, even in this marriage. And I’m wondering if I’m going to be alone all my life.

That’s what mating is supposed to help us deal with, isn’t it? The fact is that we are alone when we are born and we are alone when we die. It’s the being alone part that makes both those experiences so terrifying, and that terror is a big part of what drives us to avoid solitude in between.

I don’t want to be alone, I readily admit it. This what I have in common with every single man, every widower, every divorced man in the world, up to and including my own ex-husband. We are all human, are we not? And we all crave that very special intimacy-tinged-with-sex that is the recipe for mating.

(Here I hesitate. I call it ‘mating’ for want of a better single-word [I don't want to use 'marriage'], even as I realize it makes me sound like I’m writing a script for one of those Nature movies. “And the male warily approaches the female to see if she is open to mating … .”)

And then, too, when I reach into my heart in search of less painful gender-related stuff, I encounter another kind of intimacy. That is because I have sons.

These are the only two men in the world who have drunk from my breasts. I bore them both of my body and I share with them the kind of physical intimacy that can only come from being among that rare set of individuals whose diapers I once changed and who were once allowed to throw up on me without fear of reprisal.

And the funny thing is that it is in the nature of the relationship between a mother and her children that healing will one day be necessary there, too.

I don’t know yet what I’ve done but I’m sure I’ve done something for which I will be called upon to apologize to one or both of my young men. I’m not perfect and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get both these guys to adulthood without having screwed up somewhere. And that’s okay. Experience tells me that, as long as I am willing to apologize and own my faults, that healing will be possible.

That is what my own mom taught me, you know. It’s difficult to forgive somebody when they greet your injury with blame and derision instead of validation and comfort … and a genuine apology.

And maybe, if I step back from the personal to look at the big picture, that is what I can contribute to this conversation. The knowledge that real healing of any kind begins with a non-vengeful statement of injury, on the one hand, and a non-manipulative admission of responsibility, on the other.

“You did that. It hurt me.”

“I did? I’m so sorry! I won’t do that again.”

It’s nowhere near as easy to do as it sounds. Hell, it’s not even especially easy to write.

But this writing is good for me. I cry. When I cry, I am free.

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Healing Between The Genders is our theme for June. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on June 15th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.

Today, I traveled a little over 20 miles with my youngest son and his alto saxophone in order for him to participate in the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) solo festival.

He performed there (solo: The Hunter’s Chorus, scales and sightreading) before a single judge and he did very, very well. In fact, he scored 27 out of 28 points, earning an Outstanding rating.

Mom was right beside him for as much of the performance as she was able — they kicked me out during the sightreading segment of the performance — because that’s what Moms do, isn’t it?

We’re there for the band performances and the chorus performances and the NYSSMA solos and the All County Festivals. We’re there for the school plays and the parent-teacher conferences and the IEP meetings. We go to the honors ceremonies and the games and the graduations.

We support and encourage. We beam with pride at their accomplishments. And we’re there to offer a hug and a chocolate milkshake after the team suffers that knuckle-biting loss.

We have full dance cards.

I’m an old hand at all this, of course. Richard is the youngest of four. I’ve already watched two of them graduate from high school; next year, I’m looking forward to watching the first college graduation.

But one of the neatest things about being a Mom is when the shoe is on the other foot.

I got to live that last week. Two days before my trip with my youngest son, I took a different trip with my two daughters. They sat in the audience and cheered me on when I received the Lewis Henry Morgan Award in Anthropology (awarded to the first-year Anthropology major with the highest GPA) during the Honors Convocation at Hartwick College.

I don’t know if they ‘get’ this or not but having them there meant everything.

We do more than support them while they build their lives. We also show them how we live a certain set of having-a-life options. They might never choose any of those options for themselves, and that’s okay, too. But, among other things, if I’m busy having a life of my own, I can leave them be to develop lives of their own.

That is as it should be.

So, right now, as I embark on the terrifying task of rebuilding my life, I can make it a little less terrifying by reminding myself that I am more than a safety net. I am also a model. And I am beyond blessed because my kids are there for me just as I continue to be there for them.

I don’t really have the time to make a list of all the things about parenting that it make so rewarding but one of the best things about being a parent is that you have kids. If you do your job in such a way that your kids know that you love/like them, then eventually you reach a certain point at which certain aspects of the relationship get to be mutual.

That’s when Momming gets to be more than just rewarding or fulfilling or even fun. That’s when it gets to be amazing.

That’s when Mother’s Day gets to be a family affair. And how kewl is that?

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I AM A WOMAN ON THE VERGE

Mothers is our theme for May. Please join in the conversation by joining WomenontheVerge.net, on Twitter @WomenontheVerge, on Facebook or by listening and chatting on our monthly radio show where I am a panelist. Join us for a fun and intriguing conversation on our monthly theme on May 18th from noon-1pm ET on BlogTalkRadio.com/womenontheverge.